Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent – March 8, 2026

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 8, 2026 | Sermons | 0 comments

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 8

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent – March 8, 2026

John 4:5-42

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Nutritionists will tell you that most Americans don’t drink enough water. This is significant because dehydration can impact many different areas of your life. Water helps you digest your food. Water helps your joints stay properly lubricated. Water regulates your body chemistry and your body temperature. Not getting enough water doesn’t just impact a person physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Even very mild dehydration can lead to crankiness, anxiety, poor memory, or feeling tired. Water trickles through every part of our lives, and when we don’t have enough, it can impact every part of our lives. Our bodies try to fend off dehydration by sending us a signal: We get thirsty.

It was thirst that brought together Jesus and the Samaritan woman who met him at the well. It was about noon, John tells us – the hottest part of the day. Jesus had been traveling on his way back to Galilee from Judea. He was thirsty, and so he made a pit stop in Sychar and stopped at Jacob’s well. The disciples went into town for food while Jesus lingered at the well. When a woman of Samaria came to the well with a bucket in hand, Jesus asked her for a drink.

We need to pause for a moment here to note just how unusual and awkward this scene was. First of all, it was taboo in both Jewish and Samaritan culture for two strangers of the opposite sex to be alone together. We hear the disciples freaking out about this a little later in the story. What is sometimes mocked today as “the Billy Graham rule” was the accepted cultural norm for both Jews and Samaritans.

That’s about the only thing these two cultures agreed on, however. John notes here how Jews didn’t share things in common with Samaritans. Samaritans were regarded as unclean. They were despised by most Jews. There’s a whole lot of history behind this. In a nutshell, Samaritans were seen as traitors to the Jewish people because they had intermarried with the Assyrians. Even worse, they were seen as idolaters because they had adopted many of the Assyrian religious practices, twisting Bible passages to fit their new situation and justify it all. The Samaritans had their temple on Mount Gerizim while the Jews had theirs on the temple mount in Jerusalem, and never the twain shall meet.

So, it was highly unusual and awkward for a Jewish rabbi and a Samaritan woman to be alone and chatting it up at the water cooler! But thirst had brought them together.

Jesus asked the woman for a drink. She was taken aback, for obvious reasons. When Jesus told her that he has living water to give, this sassy Samaritan pointed out that he didn’t even have a bucket. “Where do you get that living water?” she asked. Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Jesus offered her something more than H20. Jesus wasn’t talking about physical thirst at this point. He was talking about something deeper. He was talking about spiritual thirst. “Sir,” she replied, “Give me this water, that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” She was still thinking about literal water. She was still thinking about her parched throat. She was thinking about how nice it would be to not have to keep making this water run every day. But Jesus put his finger on her deeper thirst, her spiritual dehydration.

“Go, call your husband and come back,” Jesus said to her. “I have no husband,” she replied. “You are right in saying you have no husband,” Jesus continued, “for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.” Jesus sure can be blunt, can’t he?

It is hard to know the circumstances around why this woman would have had five husbands in her past. We certainly want to be fair to this woman, but we also need to be truthful about what the scriptures say about her. Whatever might have happened with her first five marriages, Jesus notes that the man she is with now is not her husband. There is a strong implication here that she is participating in the intimacies of marriage without the promises of marriage. No matter how common this might be – then or today – it is a violation of the sixth commandment, and she seems to have been a willing participant in it. Later she tells the crowd that Jesus “told me everything I have ever done.” We shouldn’t take away the agency she claims for herself by hastily painting her as a victim. She herself seems to acknowledge that she has done things for which she is not proud. She has also come to the well at a very odd time of day. She came at noon, alone, which strongly suggests she was avoiding the crowds of women who typically went on their water run first thing in the morning, when the sun wasn’t so hot. Maybe she had been ostracized by the community. Maybe she was avoiding the sideways glances and glares from the other women.

That’s a lot of “seems” and “sounds like” and “maybes,” but they add up to the consensus view that this woman has some level of scandal hanging over her, a scandal that Jesus pokes at with his blunt statement about her many husbands and her current living arrangement.

Her response is telling too. She doesn’t want to talk about it! She quickly changes the subject to theology. Jesus doesn’t press the issue. Instead, it is at this point that something truly remarkable happens. As their conversation unfolds, Jesus discloses to her the truth about himself. When she mentions the Messiah, telling Jesus she believes the Messiah will come sort things out in due time, Jesus says to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” While Jesus has hid this truth about himself from so many others up to this point, he tells this scandal-plagued Samaritan woman who he really is! He tells her that he is the Messiah, the one who has come to save. This is an important part of the conversation, because it shows us that Jesus hasn’t come to condemn her, but to save her. He has come to save her from her spiritually dehydrated life. He has come to bring her water that quenches a deeper thirst, the thirst to worship God in spirit and truth, the thirst to be in right relationship with God through the forgiveness of sins. Jesus has come to give her this water as a gift! He has come to give her living water welling up to eternal life.

When she hears this, she leaves her bucket lying on the ground and goes back to the city. She goes to the very people she had been avoiding. She says to them, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” It is posed as a question, but there is a thirst that has clearly been quenched here. As the story ends, we are told that many came to believe because of her testimony. She is part of them once again, as together they came to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, that he is truly the Savior of the world.

We used to have a sweet black lab, and one of the funny memories we have of her is from a time we took her to the beach. She was having a blast splashing around in the water, and then, apparently, she was thirsty, because she stopped and started to drink the salt water. She lapped up about three gulps from Puget Sound before shaking her head and gnashing her teeth at the salty taste. She went back to running around in the water for a few more minutes and then decided to take another drink! It was still salt water, of course, and so she reacted the same way.

We all have a deep spiritual thirst, whether we recognize it or not. And when this thirst becomes chronic, when we become spiritually dehydrated, it impacts every aspect of our lives. It impacts how we think and feel. It impacts our relationships with others. It impacts our relationship with God. It impacts whether we have hope in our lives, whether we have peace.

Oftentimes we try to alleviate this thirst by lapping up salt water – things that seem like they will help but only make the problem worse. We drink from wells that only make us more dehydrated: wells of sin, wells of self-righteousness, worldly wells that promise much but never quench that deeper thirst.

Today our Lord Jesus comes to us through his living word to offer us living water. He comes to invite us to drink deeply of the water he brings in order to quench this deeper thirst. He is not deterred by sin or scandal. He is not put off by your salty mouth. There is nothing about you he doesn’t already know. In fact, that is why he has come – to quench your thirst for forgiveness, your thirst for healing and restoration, your thirst for community, your thirst for a God you can know and love and worship in Spirit and truth. He has come to give you a new life, a life welling up with a hope and a peace and a love that begins to flow into every part of our lives.  The water he gives becomes in us a spring of water gushing up to eternal life, and it is given, Jesus says, as a gift.

This water not only hydrates our souls; it also wets our lips, making them ready and eager to tell others what we have experienced here. We too can set down our buckets, refreshed and restored by Christ’s gifts, and go out to tell others about the One who knows everything we have ever done and doesn’t turn away from us, but instead reveals himself to us as Messiah and Savior, giving us living water and a new life.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent – March 1, 2026

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 3, 2026 | Sermons | 0 comments

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 1

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent – March 1, 2026

John 3:1-17

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Nicodemus was in the dark. He was literally in the dark as he came to Jesus by night, but he was in the dark spiritually as well. He had a sense that there was something special about Jesus. He had seen, or at least heard about the signs Jesus was doing, and he knew that such signs couldn’t be done apart from the presence of God. But beyond that, he was in the dark. Even with all his advanced learning, even with his theological degree from Pharisee school, even with his status as a teacher of Israel, he was in the dark about the kingdom of God.

As Nicodemus struck up a conversation with Jesus, Jesus zeroed in on this right away. Jesus didn’t beat around the bush. Jesus knew Nicodemus was in the dark, and so he got right to the heart of the matter. “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus said to him, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Nicodemus didn’t get it. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” he said. It is hard to know if Nicodemus was being sarcastic or if he’s just stubborn, but his reply suggests that what Jesus had said about being born from above was absurd to him. “Can one enter the womb a second time and be born?” Am I supposed to somehow get back inside my mom’s tummy? Behind this ridiculous framing of things was the assumption from Nicodemus that there was something he needed to do. He was trying to turn this into something he could control. And so, Nicodemus was still in the dark.

But instead of backing down, Jesus doubled down. He said, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

“How can these things be?” Nicodemus replied.

“Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” Jesus said in return. Nicodemus was still in the dark.

In describing how one comes to see the kingdom of God, Jesus used the language of birth.

I don’t know what it was like when you were born, but when I came into the world, my mother did all the work! I’ve also watched babies being born. I’ve seen it three times, and each time none of those babies did a darn thing! It was their strong, brave mother who did everything!

That’s how it is with birth. That’s how it is when we are born. It is the mothers who do all the work. They do all the breathing, all the sweating, all the painful pushing. The babies are simply carried along by their efforts, until they find themselves blinking their newly opened eyes at the bright new world.

Jesus is telling Nicodemus that this is how we come to see the kingdom of God. It is God’s work. God does all the carrying. The Spirit does all the breathing, all the blowing. The Son of Man does all the painful parts until we are delivered, until we are born into faith, until our eyes are opened to the bright new world God is ushering in through his Son, Jesus Christ.

When this still doesn’t seem to convince Nicodemus, Jesus says to him: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”

In one of the confirmation workbooks I’ve used with our confirmation students in the past there is a page with three pictures. One picture shows someone climbing up a ladder. The next shows someone standing next to an elevator, pushing the up button. The next shows a person at the bottom of a ravine, with a helicopter hovering over it and a rescuer descending on a rope. The students are asked to select the picture which best describes the biblical view of salvation.

The answer of course, is the third picture. Salvation is not something we climb our way into by our own efforts. It is not something we select or choose or summon by pushing the right buttons so that God will come save us. Salvation is more like being at the bottom of a ravine, completely helpless, and having God descend to us in the form of a rescuer, a redeemer, a savior.

Once again, the point is that God does all the work. Salvation is something we receive. We do not ascend. No one has ever ascended, Jesus tells Nicodemus. Instead, Jesus descends. He descends to us to bring us out of the darkness of that ravine and into the light of the kingdom of God.

In yet another attempt to help Nicodemus understand, Jesus points to a story this biblically literate Pharisee would have known very well: You know, Nicodemus, how the people of Israel were all dying in the wilderness from snake bites? Remember how helpless they were in the wilderness because of their sin? Do you remember how they were rescued? Do you remember what God did? God told Moses to put a serpent on a pole, and that anyone who looked upon the snake would live. God sent his Word from above in order to rescue them. That’s what I’ve come to do in a much bigger way. I’ve come from above to bring life. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Once again, it is God who does all the work. God does the saving. God delivers his people into life. God brings people into the kingdom. All there is for us to do is to open our eyes to God’s saving work. All there is for us to do is to is look upon him whom God sent and believe in him, trust him, have faith in him, and we will see the kingdom of God. We’ll be in it! We won’t be in the dark any longer!

In the Large Catechism, Luther writes that the church is the mother who conceives and bears every Christian through God’s Word. It is in and through the church that God does his work of delivering people into the kingdom.

The church is indeed every Christian’s mother, and the baptismal font is the birth canal. Jesus commanded his church to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and it is through this sacrament that we are born from above. It is in Holy Baptism that we are joined to Jesus’ death and resurrection, marked with his cross forever. It is in Holy Baptism that Christ descends to us individually to rescue us and deliver us into the kingdom. This is all God’s work. The only thing we do is the same thing we did when we were born the first time: we simply open our eyes to what he has done for us. We simply open our eyes to the new reality he has brought us into.

Even after we are born from above, we still sometimes find ourselves in the dark with Nicodemus. We understand there is something special about Jesus, but we lose sight of the kingdom of God. We want to turn it into something we can control, which is about as effective as trying to control the wind.

Even after we are born from above, there are times when we find ourselves at the bottom of a ravine, completely helpless. We fall into pits of anger, or anxiety, or despair, or regret, or shame. We fall into difficult, painful circumstances which are so far out of our control that all we can hope for is for some help from above.

Even after we are born from above, we sometimes find ourselves dying in the wilderness, snakebit by our sins. We come face to face with our own brokenness, and we know that salvation is going to have to come from outside ourselves.

This is why we keep coming back to our mother. We gather together in the bosom of mother church so she can tell us the story of our birth from above. We gather together in her lap so she can remind us that by God’s carrying and the Spirit’s breathing and the Savior’s painful pushing, we have been delivered into the kingdom of God, now and forever.

If the world feels dark to you today, just open your eyes to the kingdom which God has delivered you into.

If your life feels dark, just open your eyes and look upon the One who was lifted up for you. Look upon him with eyes of faith. Look upon him, trusting that he has come to rescue you.

You have been born from above, so open your eyes to the bright new day that Jesus has made possible, and live in the light of God’s great love for you.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church